The Apprentice
by TomFoolery
Summary: A dark explanation of the bitterness of Severus Snape, his past, and painful secrets.


**The Apprentice**_**  
**_

**Chapter One: Little Lost Girl  
**

_**October 31, 1979**_

Nadia Lawrence giggled playfully as she ran around the kitchen at her mother's heels, swinging at her apron strings with the deft movements of a mischievous kitten. Though her mother clicked her tongue disapprovingly at her little Nadia's antics, she couldn't help but laugh at the same time.

It was growing dark outside and the first flurries of late fall were beginning to fall outside. Her father would be home at any time and her mother would have the usual good dinner on the table shortly afterwards, like domestic clockwork. But in the meantime, she returned to swatting at her mother's apron strings, dreaming of the next day when she could play in a yard full of fresh snow and her mother would help her make a snowman with a funny face.

"Nadia! do you ever stay still?"

Nadia snickered impishly and ran to the other side of the spacious kitchen to play with the set of wooden spoons she had been given to play with that evening while her mother returned to stirring a pot of potatoes.

The door cracked open in the next room and little Nadia's head shot up in immediate interest.

"Daddy!" she squealed with delight, abandoning the spoons to run and greet him.

"Nadia!" a tall man with light brown hair tossed a coat over a small blue loveseat and stretched out his arms to embrace his little girl.

"Daddy, it's snowing, and mummy says we can play in it tomorrow but she won't let me tonight because it's dark and she says it's time for dinner and she gave me these to play with instead, let me show you-" She babbled excitedly.

"Well, we'll play in it tomorrow when I come home, how's that?"

"I don't want to wait a million bazillion years!" she exclaimed, tottering back to the kitchen to grab the spoons and display them for her father as he laughed at her eager impatience.

"A million bazillion is a big number!" he called after her, pulling his scarf off to throw it with his coat on the chair and heading into the kitchen after her to greet his wife.

"She's right you know. Some days it does feel like a million bazillion years before you come home." His wife June smiled.

"How can I ever make it up to you?" he grinned apologetically, giving his wife a deep hug and a gentle kiss before leaning over to pluck a potato from the pot she had been stirring.

"I'll think of something" she answered with a shy smile, pausing to look over at Nadia who had just made a loud racket as she dropped all the wooden spoons she had been scooping up to show to her father. "For now, dinner is not quite ready and you don't need to be sticking your fingers into the potatoes with dirty fingers."

"Daddy! Come look!" she cried in frustration.

"Wow!" he called out. "Would you look at those?" he asked, kneeling down to take hold of one of the little utensils. "This is a good spoon" he said very seriously, holding it up as if to eye it from every angle.

"Daddy, you're silly"

"But I love you" he replied, dropping the spoon and tickling her briefly before he picked her up and turned again to talk to his wife.

"So how are things at the office hon?"

"Things are still tense as ever. You would think working in the Department of Mysteries would keep me closed off from much of what's been going around about You-Know-Who, but I'm more involved with it now than ever. What's worse is Augustus Rookwood hasn't come in for the past few days and people are starting to talk."

Nadia tossed impatiently in his arms and he set her down where she trotted off to her corner of the kitchen to play with her spoons as June turned around to give her husband a horrified look. "I never did like him" she said quietly.

"We exchanged a few _choice_ words over the running of the Department and the Department's involvement in hunting down Death Eaters."

"Like what?" she lowered her voice so as to keep her daughter from hearing and asking the litany of questions that would stream from the mouth of an almost five-year old.

"Well, he called me a Mudblood lover and a blood traitor and the usual rhyme that goes along with all of it." He said, lowering his voice even more.

"That man is such slime. He's a horrible excuse for a person."

"Are you burning those potatoes?' he asked in a tone of mock concern.

She looked down and grimaced. "Time for dinner sweetheart!" she called over to her daughter who was engrossed with the most simple of objects on the other side of the room. "Go with Daddy and wash your hands in the bathroom."

"But I'm not done playing" she protested.

"Come along. We'll wash our hands and it will be all fun. I have a game for washing hands, haven't I ever showed you?"

"There's no game for washing hands." She replied skeptically.

"Sure there is, if you come I'll show it to you…"

June smiled as she watched her husband and little girl go into the bathroom and could hear giggles down the hallway where her husband had likely engaged little Nadia in a game of soap wars or towel flicking. She couldn't help but stop to think that although they wore her out on most days, she wouldn't give her either of them for anything.

She began scooping the potatoes from the pot into a large bowl and leaned down to see how the chicken was coming in the oven when she felt a tug at her apron strings.

"Nadia…" she sighed in laughing weariness at her daughter's refusal to leave her alone.

"Daddy plays mean" she pouted, crossing her arms as he came back in, laughing hard and drying off parts of his neck, face, and arms with a bath towel.

"_I_ play mean?" he laughed.

Nadia giggled, and in that split second they stood as a happy family in a cold, darkening world. Their home, their family, and their memories were all beautifully intertwined with one another. Their lives were laid out in the dancing pictures on the walls, and there was still room for more pictures, for a future. Yet little could any of them have known that things would be different.

A loud echoing bang ripped through the next room, startling the three of them and Nadia screamed.

"Where are they!" an eerie voice hissed from the next room.

"Who's-" June began to ask, panicked.

"It's them June! It's Death Eaters!" He whispered frantically, pulling out his wand. "Take Nadia and get into the woods! Don't come back!"

June Lawrence looked faint but quickly and roughly grabbed Nadia by the arm and was steering her towards the back door of the kitchen when loud shouts began coming from the next room. She was just about to the back door when a loud crack splintered through it, and a slew of men with dark cloaks could be seen through the break in the wood.

In a split second, June instinctively swung Nadia by her arm and tossed her into a low cabinet with a set of pans and slammed its door behind her as the back door burst open and the Death Eaters swarmed around, intent on murder.

"What do you want!" she heard her mother scream.

Nadia was stunned for a moment in the dark little cabinet she had been thrown into. Her mother never screamed like that or just grabbed her and thrown her around, not in all the time Nadia could remember, and it sent chills down her little spine. She was about to come out and ask what in the world was going on when she heard two words she would never forget.

_"Avada Kedavra!"_" came rushing from the mouth of a man with a gruff voice.

The most frightening green light streaked across the room and Nadia could see it through the cracks in the cabinet door. The tiny amount of light that had filtered in brushed her skin and she was suddenly filled with strange visions of things she didn't understand and her body went very cold. She shut her eyes and tried to block out everything that was going on outside in the kitchen. The feeling or horror passed quickly and there was a loud thump on the cabinet door and made her jump.

She was the vision of everything a child shouldn't be: crouched in the cabinet, frozen with fear and whimpering in silence as the men who had murdered her mother began to bicker back and forth. She was innocently unaware of it all, of death or torture, but was still too frightened to move or make a sound. And somehow, in her little mind, she knew that silence was necessary.

Everything fell silent around her and she could barely hear the sound of her own breathing. She longed for her mother to come and to crawl in her lap and explain everything. She longed for her father to hug them both, her mother and her, and tell them it was all over. Minutes ticked by and there was still nothing but silence and she began to feel impatient.

Where were they? They would never just put her away in a cabinet and forget her like that. Perhaps it was grown-up people's stuff that they were doing. They were always sending her from the room or telling her to go play so they could talk. But they had never put her in a cupboard to do their grown-up things, and she began to feel panicked and tearful. And on top of everything, she was hungry and it was time for dinner.

She finally decided to push open the door to the cabinet. It would be worth her mother's scolding just to get out. But she found that the door would not open. She pushed harder. Still, it would not open. She burst into tears.

"Mummy! Let me out!"

There was only more silence.

"Please! I'm hungry mummy!"

She began to wail and beat her tiny fists on the door to the cabinet, but the door barely bounced open a millimeter before popping back shut. There was something in front of the door that wouldn't allow it to open.

"Please mummy!"

She didn't know that her mother lay there, dead and propped against the cabinet which held her little girl, never again to shoo her away for toying with her apron strings. She didn't know her father lay in the next room dead as well, never again to play a game of splashing wars with her when they washed their hands for dinner. There would be no more dinners at that house. She didn't know or understand any of it.

She cried for hours as the snow fell outside on that dreary October evening. She cried until she wore herself out, and late into the night, far past her bedtime, she fell asleep, exhausted, and oblivious for the last night of her life to a grief that would haunt her forever.


End file.
